Southland's executive producer Christopher Chulack has admitted that he was pleased the show was given a fixed number of episodes this season.

The police drama, which stars Ben McKenzie, was handed a second season of 13 episodes by NBC but the network eventually cancelled the show before it had premiered.

TNT later aired the six instalments that had been filmed and ordered a third season comprising ten episodes.

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"That's a big help to be able to sit there and know where the end is, at least for this particular season, and dole out the weight of the stories for the various characters," Chulack told TV Guide. "[We] actually talked about what's the beginning, middle and end of this emotional arc for this particular character and where do we want the relationships of the partners to go and how do they evolve?"

However, Chulack insisted that he did not think of the season as the end of the show.

"We're just telling the stories that interest us - we're not trying to build up to any kind of crescendo," he said. "You do have a finite number and we know certain stories will end there, so we'll lay it out to the end. It's like writing a book - you don't know if there will be a sequel, so you try to make it the best book you can. That's what we've tried to do here."

He added: "We know what we have and the tools we have to make it, and we're going to do our best to force them to bring us back another year."